February 18, 2015

Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson to speak at SVSU

Author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson will speak at Saginaw Valley State University Wednesday, Feb. 25, at 7 p.m. in SVSU's Malcolm Field Theatre for the Performing Arts. Her talk is part of  Black History Month events at SVSU; it is free and open to the public.

Wilkerson is author of the New York Times best-selling book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which tells the story of three black citizens who left the southern United States in search of a better life in the north. The book is based off of more than 1,200 interviews that Wilkerson conducted with blacks that participated in this migration from 1915 to 1970. It also addresses the cultural and political effects that this movement had in the northern states.

The book won numerous honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, and the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities.

As the Chicago bureau chief of the New York Times, in 1994 Wilkerson became the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism and the first black person to win for individual reporting. She also has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the George Polk Award, and was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists..

Wilkerson completed a bachelor’s degree at Howard University. She has been a guest speaker at more than 100 universities, and has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston University.

Immediately following her presentation, Wilkerson will sign copies of her book. For more information, contact SVSU's Office of Diversity Programs at (989) 964-4068.